In 1990, Desplechin directed
La vie des morts, starring several actors who would go on to appear in multiple Desplechin films, such as
Marianne Denicourt,
Emmanuelle Devos, Emmanuel Salinger and
Thibault de Montalembert. The 54-minute-long film won the Jean Vigo Prize for Short Films, and was shown at the
1990 Cannes Film Festival. Desplechin's first feature-length movie,
The Sentinel, premiered in 1992 at
Cannes, starring several actors from
La vie des morts as well as
Mathieu Amalric,
Chiara Mastroianni, and
Lászlo Szabó, who have also become frequent Desplechin collaborators. Desplechin's 1996 film
My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument was critically successful. In 2000, Desplechin made his first English-language film,
Esther Kahn, adapted from a short story by
Arthur Symons, and starred
Summer Phoenix in the title role. The film was seen as a homage to
François Truffaut's work because it deals with coming of age (a favorite Truffaut theme) and uses the
New Wave cinema techniques that Truffaut pioneered. Three years later, Desplechin made two films adapting
Edward Bond's play ''
Playing 'In the Company of Men': one showing 70% rehearsal footage and 30% of the film itself; and the other with inverse proportions. The next year, he directed Kings and Queen, which mixed comedy and tragedy to tell the story of two ex-lovers played by Amalric and Devos. The film also starred Catherine Deneuve in the role of a psychiatrist. Kings and Queen'' was nominated for several awards and Amalric won the
César Award for Best Actor. However, controversy arose when actress
Marianne Denicourt, Desplechin's ex-girlfriend, accused him of revealing elements of her private life in the screenplay of
Kings and Queen. In 2005, she published
Mauvais génie ("Evil Genius"), describing her relationship with an unscrupulous film director called "Arnold Duplancher." In 2006, she unsuccessfully sued Desplechin. In 2007, Desplechin filmed ''L'Aimée
, a documentary showing his father, his brother, and his nephews in the family house in Roubaix just before it was to be sold. That same year, he filmed the family drama A Christmas Tale'', starring Deneuve, Amalric, Devos, and Mastroianni. This film was screened in competition at Cannes in 2008. His 2013 film
Jimmy Picard was nominated for the
Palme d'Or at the
2013 Cannes Film Festival, constituting his fifth film selected in the main competition. In 2014, he adapted
Alexander Ostrovsky's play
The Forest. For the drama film
My Golden Days (2015), which he directed and co-wrote, Desplechin won the
César and
Lumière Award for best director, and the SACD Prize at the
2015 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, he was a member of the main competition jury of the
2016 Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, the film
Oh Mercy! was nominated for the
Palme d'Or at the
2019 Cannes Film Festival, making it his seventh film selected in the main competition. His 2021 film,
Deception, had its world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. His 2022,
Brother and Sister starring
Marion Cotillard and
Melvil Poupaud, premiered in official competition at the
2022 Cannes Film Festival, marking his eighth entry in the festival's main competition. In 2024, his docudrama
Filmlovers! premiered in the Special Screenings section of the
2024 Cannes Film Festival. In 2025, Desplechin's drama film,
Two Pianos, starring
François Civil,
Nadia Tereszkiewicz and
Charlotte Rampling, premiered in the Gala Presentations section of the
2025 Toronto International Film Festival, becoming Desplechin's first film in over 20 years to premiere outside of Cannes. ==Filmography==